Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

Ok on way back from hamfest now.

That absolute turd arrived at 08:30 and emptied it again 

Did manage to grab a manky tek 465, a solartron 7150, some 10 turn pots, TO18 heat sinks and a book to sell. And I still have change from £25 

Is the turd a dealer?

Yes. Same one I mentioned to you last time. He waltzed off with a pile of kit and left the trash for everyone else. Turns up as a seller but doesn't set up, goes round and empties everything off and that's it.

There are no rules around this? In any case, if he's a known quantity and you can learn what vehicle he uses, it should be possible to run interference and stop him from getting there early, if you can organise a few people for joint action.

Do they just leave straight after, or do they eventually set up their stall? I guess the organisers shouldn't let them in early if they arrive with nothing to sell. 

David

Or of course, they could just make a rule that nobody buys/sells anything until the fest is officially open to the members and public, but that would scupper BD's plans as well 

Having rules and enforcing rules are orthogonal.  But you knew that.

[mnementh]

Having done the flea market trade myself, I know from experience that most flea markets who are serious about the trade (like they are in Flori-duh, for example) have such rules in place. Enforcement... ehhh... that seems to depend on the specific venue and how well or poorly they're doing ATM. 

They do this to keep the "market-divers" from doing exactly that and the resultant "dry up and blow away at lunchtime" phenomenon as vendors leave in droves from lack of foot traffic that kills a flea market, as the "anchor business" food vendors will quickly leave for better venues. All it takes is one bad spring season to kill a flea market's rep.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

<snip>
Mmmmhmmm... so inconveniencing someone wealthy enough to own a car is criminal and prosecutable... but destroying lives and making it impossible for whole segments of the population to house or feed themselves, much less own a car, is okay because it's monopoly corporations and politicians doing it, so is just business as usual.

Does cast a stark contrast on the concepts of High Crimes and Misdemeanors vs The Golden Rule, doesn't it? 

EDIT:   That actually is even more perverse than I originally thought. Consider this all-too-possible scenario:
Entitled dickbag parks in a handicapped spot repeatedly; often enough that someone who actually has the permit notices. Said victim calls the cops and lets the air out of his tires so he can't get away before they arrive. At worst dickbag receives a ticket he can probably get out of if he hires a lawyer; handicapped victim actually faces criminal prosecution and jail time.   

mnem
we are fucking doomed.

That's about it, it's like, at least in the UK, it is not illegal for someone to park their car on your driveway, but it is illegal for you to remove it or damage it in any way 

Huh... While the law does vary by locality, over here it is generally illegal to park on a private homeowner's property in any way without express permission or invitation. In the street in front of your house is okay, unless it blocks your driveway; they're really anal about that in most municipalities.

Oh, and in some municipalities, you can get a ticket for parking in your own driveway if done so it blocks access to adjoining neighborhood sidewalks; handicapped accessibility laws and all that.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

Ok on way back from hamfest now.

That absolute turd arrived at 08:30 and emptied it again 

Did manage to grab a manky tek 465, a solartron 7150, some 10 turn pots, TO18 heat sinks and a book to sell. And I still have change from £25 

Is the turd a dealer?

Yes. Same one I mentioned to you last time. He waltzed off with a pile of kit and left the trash for everyone else. Turns up as a seller but doesn't set up, goes round and empties everything off and that's it.

There are no rules around this? In any case, if he's a known quantity and you can learn what vehicle he uses, it should be possible to run interference and stop him from getting there early, if you can organise a few people for joint action.

Do they just leave straight after, or do they eventually set up their stall? I guess the organisers shouldn't let them in early if they arrive with nothing to sell. 

David

Or of course, they could just make a rule that nobody buys/sells anything until the fest is officially open to the members and public, but that would scupper BD's plans as well 

Having rules and enforcing rules are orthogonal.  But you knew that.

Well, what I thought I knew was, BD getting there early, convincing the organizers to let him in early so that he can beat the turd, perhaps his hyper miling style of driving cost him precious moments today 

[mnementh]

COMPONENT SORTING

...Found the datasheet for the CPU core of the 84XX , as well as the datasheet for the MAB8441 which apparently is the same as my 8440 but just with an 8 bit LED driver added to it. So could use that datasheet and just ignore the LED bits, I guess.

I wonder if there is a way to read the contents of the internal mask ROM.... can't be bothered to read all the details of the datasheets for now, too hot for that, and I prefer paper, hate reading on screens.
At the very least, I guess one can affirm that there must be SOMETHING in that ROM... or else they would not have packaged the die in that DIP package to begin with...
Maybe at the least, I could try to power it up, give it a clock signal with my sig gen, a reset pulse.... and see if comes back to life ? Maybe it will do something....

You have entirely too much "free" time on your hands. I think you should drag out one or two of your scopes and revisit them... maybe post some hollow-state pr0n in the thread.

mnem
 

[Zenith]

Did manage to grab a manky tek 465, a solartron 7150, some 10 turn pots, TO18 heat sinks and a book to sell. And I still have change from £25 

Not a bad haul. I got there half an hour late having taken a detour around the back lanes. In the past I've managed to drive right there off the motorway. I saw no particular bargains - at least to me - and nothing I was particularly looking for. I was a bit tempted by the odd thing, but not enough to bite.

[Cerebus]

I should find out where he lives and stab his tyres early in the morning 

In other news, frozen pigs just flew out of hell… it looks like it actually works.

Have ID’ed the probe sensor doesn’t work properly on one of the channels but that’s an easy fix. Might even work with a clean.

Now now, no criminal damage... the same effect more or less can be achieved with small bits of wood ie matchsticks, jammed into the valve. It lets all the air out, but doesn't damage anything. Or you can use a Schrader tool to loosen the valve core, to the same effect.

That still counts as criminal damage.

The damage caused as a result of the offence does not have to be permanent. As long as the damage caused affects the value or performance of the property,  this is sufficient to be classed as an act of criminal damage.

Examples of criminal damage ... Smearing mud on the walls of a police cell

If there's any work involved in correcting what's been done, or if it [temporarily] affects the ability to use the property it counts as damage.

Letting air out of tyres might even count as aggravated criminal damage as it introduces an element that might cause physical injury to a person.

Mmmmhmmm... so inconveniencing someone wealthy enough to own a car is criminal and prosecutable... but destroying lives and making it impossible for whole segments of the population to house or feed themselves, much less own a car, is okay because it's monopoly corporations and politicians doing it, so is just business as usual.

Does cast a stark contrast on the concepts of High Crimes and Misdemeanors vs The Golden Rule, doesn't it? 

EDIT:   That actually is even more perverse than I originally thought. Consider this all-too-possible scenario:
Entitled dickbag parks in a handicapped spot repeatedly; often enough that someone who actually has the permit notices. Said victim calls the cops and lets the air out of his tires so he can't get away before they arrive. At worst dickbag receives a ticket he can probably get out of if he hires a lawyer; handicapped victim actually faces criminal prosecution and jail time.   

mnem
we are fucking doomed.

Criminal damage is also the law applicable to landlords cutting off their tenants electricity as harassment*, protesters pasting stickers to the windscreens of cars parked at family planning clinics, etc. etc.

Don't go making a mountain out of a molehill because some behaviour you would condone is in fact technically a criminal act. And letting the air out of some entitled a-holes tyres is just vigilantism, the result of thinking that one is sufficiently entitled by self-belief in one's own moral standing to take the law into one's own hands, hardly behaviour one should hold up as an example of the "good" being punished by an unjust law (which law anyway isn't). The extension of criminal damage to acts that don't cause immediate physical damage, but do cause loss of money, time, or use of something is entirely reasonable. If a neighbour with whom one has some sort of dispute padlocks one's gates to harass one, without causing permanent damage, is it not reasonable to treat it just the same in essence as if they had welded them shut?

You seem to have this unfounded belief that the English criminal law is something handed down from on high by the elite to oppress the huddled masses. It isn't, most criminal law in England and Wales evolved as Common Law, based on precedents set in the trials of ordinary people for the actions they took towards other ordinary people who had brought the matter before the courts for adjudication.

* Happened to a friend, who happened to be a law student. They asked their tutor for advice resulting in their head of department writing to the landlord promising that the department would support criminal charges, and if necessary prosecute them itself, if the behaviour was repeated.

[Zenith]

Having done the flea market trade myself, I know from experience that most flea markets who are serious about the trade (like they are in Flori-duh, for example) have such rules in place. Enforcement... ehhh... that seems to depend on the specific venue and how well or poorly they're doing ATM. 

It's a different scene. At radio rallies in the UK there are a few people trading in new items, or components. A few give the impression of dealing in used gear, but not as a major source of their income. A lot of it is people having clear outs and happy to make a few quid, or silent key sales. It's far less "structured".

[Vince]

COMPONENT SORTING

...Found the datasheet for the CPU core of the 84XX , as well as the datasheet for the MAB8441 which apparently is the same as my 8440 but just with an 8 bit LED driver added to it. So could use that datasheet and just ignore the LED bits, I guess.

I wonder if there is a way to read the contents of the internal mask ROM.... can't be bothered to read all the details of the datasheets for now, too hot for that, and I prefer paper, hate reading on screens.
At the very least, I guess one can affirm that there must be SOMETHING in that ROM... or else they would not have packaged the die in that DIP package to begin with...
Maybe at the least, I could try to power it up, give it a clock signal with my sig gen, a reset pulse.... and see if comes back to life ? Maybe it will do something....

You have entirely too much "free" time on your hands. I think you should drag out one or two of your scopes and revisit them... maybe post some hollow-state pr0n in the thread.

mnem
 

I will get back to my regular boat anchor activities as soon as schedule permits. Maybe in 3 months. For now, I need to finish sorting and organizing my components and misc H/W, almost done.

Then I need to resume work on my Rochar Nixie DVM because it's in a million bits all over the bench so I need to finish it, assuming I am competent enough to actually manage that, while it's still fresh in my mind, and before I lose parts and/or forget how to put them back together.

Then I need to fix and shift a couple scopes, to make some money and some much needed room. For instance, an old brown analog Philips scope, and a GOULD 1604 hybrid scope with I think the same battery leakage corrosion problem that I fixed in that other 1604 I fixed just 2 years ago now.

These are my priorities for the coming weeks/months.

When that's done, I will resume boat anchor activities. First in line is my second Tek 502A which is very sick. Started work on it when I got it last December, posted here, starting with the time base section but despite great efforts I couldn't find why it wouldn't work, so I was a bit baffled and desperate. A few months have passed since then, so hopefully with a fresh new look at it, I will this time manage to fix it.

Then after that, I need to decide what to do with my Tek 453 whose CRT HV transformer released the magic smoke. A working 453 can be found for 50 Euros, so I can't justify spending a cent on this burned transformer. Since there is nothing to lose, and if I can get enameled wire for cheap, I might try to rewind it just for "fun", as an educational thing, since I have never done it (and because the specs for it are available, of course). If I can't be bothered, then I don't know.... keep it for parts and move on. 

Then, I want to resume work on the restoration of my Tek 575 hollow state transistor curve tracer. But the next step is the cosmetic restoration, which will require me to buy some tools and supplies to do a decent job, so will cost some money.

Then there is my Ferisol Nixie counter. Need to make an extender PCB so I can fix a couple Nixie boards.

Then there is this and that and those and these two things over there not to mention those as well... among other things of course ! 

But if I can get those first few things I listed, done this year, that would be cool.

[Cerebus]

That's about it, it's like, at least in the UK, it is not illegal for someone to park their car on your driveway, but it is illegal for you to remove it or damage it in any way 

Wrong in almost every important respect. It is unlawful for someone to park on your driveway(tort), it is not unlawful to have said vehicle moved on private property, but becomes illegal the moment on is on public property unless one is properly licensed to do so or is a bailiff acting under court order, or anyone acting under the directions of a police constable or traffic warden (RTA), it is unlawful to damage it in so doing (tort), but recent precedent shows that it is not illegal to damage it in doing so (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tees-60260155). It is illegal to clamp or otherwise immobilise a vehicle on private property except by closing a gate or barrier that was present but not closed when the vehicle was parked (Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 S.54).

[mnementh]

...You seem to have this unfounded belief that the English criminal law is something handed down from on high by the elite to oppress the huddled masses. It isn't, most criminal law in England and Wales evolved as Common Law, based on precedents set in the trials of ordinary people for the actions they took towards other ordinary people who had brought the matter before the courts for adjudication.

I probably didn't explain my thinking very well; sorry. 

Not English criminal law specifically; but the change in direction of lawmaking in general over my lifetime. I'm pretty sure you've noticed the resumed tendency for laws in general to reinforce the Golden Rule rather than any real form of social equity. Also the general trend towards an ever-tightening net of laws which as an aggregate tend to criminalize poverty.

I guess I thought it was only so egregious over here; examples like these show to me that this isn't just a "Corporate States of America" problem but rather a "Human beings and Humanity" problem.

At least, that's where my thinking was going.

mnem
At this point I'm going to drop the subject, as it is definitely dipping toes in the Politics mudpuddle.

[bd139]

Ok 465 done. There were three issues:

1. Inconsistent trace height and drop outs. This was the usual channel bandwidth leaf switches that needed cleaning. Fixed - cleaned.
2. Probe indicator for channel 2 being wrong. This was the also usual resistor shorted to the CH2 attenuator casing. Fixed - bent back out of the way.
3. Delayed time base trigger edge switch broken. Decided not to fix this for now. As usual it's on the corner so got dinked. It's sort of normal on these. Can't win everything.
4. Chasing ghosts because the Siglent probe I was using is apparently duff already (ffs)

Apart from that it works fine!

Reminder of before:



And now:



Main tools used were a microfibre cloth and some kitchen spray 

Edit: forgot nudes:

Dicky bandwidth limit switch:



Stupidly placed resistor after unshorting it - they moved it slightly in later models:

[mnementh]

So will you accept the now, ya manky git...? 

mnem
 

[Zenith]

Wrong in almost every important respect. It is unlawful for someone to park on your driveway(tort), it is not unlawful to have said vehicle moved on private property, but becomes illegal the moment on is on public property unless one is properly licensed to do so or is a bailiff acting under court order, or anyone acting under the directions of a police constable or traffic warden (RTA), ...............

There's the law and what you can in theory do, such as suing someone for damages for parking on your driveway, and there's the practicality of doing this in  a timely way and gaining just redress.

There was a case a few years back of someone who parked a car on a private driveway, in some port, I think it was Dover. They had permission to park on the driveway at an address in the street, to avoid the ferry port parking charges. The problem was they parked at the wrong address, causing the householder immense problems, as parking was tight in the street. I'm not quite sure what happened, but it didn't seem a simple matter of calling the police and having them remove the car.

[bd139]

So will you accept the now, ya manky git...? 

mnem
 

Yes 

[mnementh]

Having done the flea market trade myself, I know from experience that most flea markets who are serious about the trade (like they are in Flori-duh, for example) have such rules in place. Enforcement... ehhh... that seems to depend on the specific venue and how well or poorly they're doing ATM. 

It's a different scene. At radio rallies in the UK there are a few people trading in new items, or components. A few give the impression of dealing in used gear, but not as a major source of their income. A lot of it is people having clear outs and happy to make a few quid, or silent key sales. It's far less "structured".

Yeah, I know the scene, at least as it plays out over here. One of the flea markets I did regular trade at hosted a couple small HAM swap meets a few times a season. My first IRL experience with the "ratchet-jawin' hoboes" phenomenon we make fun of in here.     Also the source of a few TE scores which, for good or evil, helped get me started down this road. 

I used to do both; buy and sell. I'd arrive with the produce vendors and set up all but my most theivable bits of consumer electronics, then go make the rounds as the yard-sale people started filtering in and shop for stock. Then I'd go back to my stall and sell while triaging the day's acquisitions.

Hard work, but on the whole it were a helluva lot of fun.

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

Wrong in almost every important respect. It is unlawful for someone to park on your driveway(tort), it is not unlawful to have said vehicle moved on private property, but becomes illegal the moment on is on public property unless one is properly licensed to do so or is a bailiff acting under court order, or anyone acting under the directions of a police constable or traffic warden (RTA), ...............

There's the law and what you can in theory do, such as suing someone for damages for parking on your driveway, and there's the practicality of doing this in  a timely way and gaining just redress.

There was a case a few years back of someone who parked a car on a private driveway, in some port, I think it was Dover. They had permission to park on the driveway at an address in the street, to avoid the ferry port parking charges. The problem was they parked at the wrong address, causing the householder immense problems, as parking was tight in the street. I'm not quite sure what happened, but it didn't seem a simple matter of calling the police and having them remove the car.

I think if it's on private land it becomes a civil law matter rather than criminal law, so the police wouldn't be interested. Not that they are interested in  anything these days, unless it's in their targets. Or if you're lucky and live somewhere relatively quiet like I do, they might come out on a trivial matter out of sheer boredom.

[Zenith]

Main tools used were a microfibre cloth and some kitchen spray 

Change your avatar to Mr Sheen.

[grizewald]

Datron 1071, penultimate installment

Once I was able to see and probe the PSU circuitry, some worn out electrolytics were swiftly identified, along with a diode bridge which
had suffered badly from the excess current it had been asked to provide. There were also a bunch of tants which were replaced without
testing as some were grossly under-dimensioned for the voltages they were dealing with - a 47µF 6.3V tantalum capacitor on the main
5V rail being a prime example. The 350V 10µF capacitor in the centre of the picture had no measurable capacitance at all if I remember
correctly!



My eye was also drawn to the horrors of the main 5V rail's LM309K voltage regulator.



Quite a few 10xx series meters suffer from this problem. It would seem that Datron used an acid flux when they were soldering the
wires to the TO-3 packaged regulator and fitting it to the heatsink. The acid was not washed off and once the rubber insulation tubes
were added over the wires, the acid could sit undisturbed to do its evil work. This not only caused the rubber to appear mouldy as it
does here, it also slowly ate through the regulator's leads and even migrated along the package's leads to the internals of the regulator.
As you can see, it has even started eating into the anodised aluminium where it seems to have flowed from the rubber tubing onto the
heatsink.

Removing the heatsink to replace the regulator and wiring is made even more entertaining by the fact that there's also a transistor
on the heatsink below the regulator which is soldered directly to the PCB. The transistor is bolted to the heatsink with a nylon screw
and nut. As you can imagine, after some 45 years of baking on the heatsink, the nylon was good and crunchy! As was the hardware
on the heatsink right next to it.



In the end, I ended up replacing the majority of the PSU components. It may not have been strictly necessary for some of them, but
the end result was ripple free and accurate rails and a warm, pleasant feeling from knowing that I will never have to take this part
of the Datron apart ever again!

Next up, the final installment and a classic factory induced problem...

[mnementh]

...You have entirely too much "free" time on your hands. I think you should drag out one or two of your scopes and revisit them... maybe post some hollow-state pr0n in the thread.

mnem
 

I will get back to my regular boat anchor activities as soon as schedule permits. Maybe in 3 months. For now, need to finish sorting and organizing my components and misc H/W, almost done. Then I need to resume work on my Rochar Nixie DVM because it's in a millions bits all over the bench so I need to finish it, assuming I am competent enough to actually managed that, while it's still fresh in my mind, and before I lose parts and/or forget how to put them back together...

But if I can get those first few things I listed, done this year, that would be cool.

Ahhh, I had forgotten that you did in fact already have a smallish on your bench. So what specifically is the holdup on that; I know funds are short?

I've faced that dilemma myself... though I'll admit, the need to use my bench usually results in me eventually* figuring out a method to put said project "away in a banker box" to protect it from my own clumsy self. I've learned the hard way that at least with me, every day a project spends dismantled on my bench increases (seemingly exponentially) the likelihood of me dropping something on it and breaking it beyond salvation, or losing a handful of mission-critical screws or components while I'm occupied with something else.

I've gotten in the habit of taking copious pics on my phone so they're handy when I want to resume; also of leaving myself lots of notes because I am a very forgetful dwagon. 

mnem
*I refuse to admit just how eventually that sometimes is...      

[med6753]

Ok 465 done. There were three issues:

1. Inconsistent trace height and drop outs. This was the usual channel bandwidth leaf switches that needed cleaning. Fixed - cleaned.
2. Probe indicator for channel 2 being wrong. This was the also usual resistor shorted to the CH2 attenuator casing. Fixed - bent back out of the way.
3. Delayed time base trigger edge switch broken. Decided not to fix this for now. As usual it's on the corner so got dinked. It's sort of normal on these. Can't win everything.
4. Chasing ghosts because the Siglent probe I was using is apparently duff already (ffs)

Apart from that it works fine!

Reminder of before:



And now:



Main tools used were a microfibre cloth and some kitchen spray 

Edit: forgot nudes:

Dicky bandwidth limit switch:



Stupidly placed resistor after unshorting it - they moved it slightly in later models:

All normal stuff on a 400 series.

I got the spare 465B vertical board out of the tote in garage awaiting your request.

[mnementh]

Main tools used were a microfibre cloth and some kitchen spray 

Change your avatar to Mr Sheen.

Izzat the "across the pond" equivalent of dis guy...? Not sure bd would be willin' ta shave 'is head like I do... 

mnem
 

[ch_scr]

Main tools used were a microfibre cloth and some kitchen spray 

Change your avatar to Mr Sheen.

Izzat the "across the pond" equivalent of dis guy...? Not sure bd would be willin' ta shave 'is head like I do... 

mnem
 

He's known under a slightly different name in germany 

[mnementh]

Izzat the "across the pond" equivalent of dis guy...? Not sure bd would be willin' ta shave 'is head like I do... 

mnem
 

He's known under a slightly different name in germany 

Bwahahahaha!

That sounds like something from a SNL skit or the Upright Citizen's Brigade...

mnem

[med6753]

Papa Smurf's Chop Shop in action.*  Parts salvaged from a duff 7A26 to make the long trip to the Land of the Rising Sun this coming week.





* All parts salvaged lawfully and legitimately.